Review by Booklist Review
Ages 4-8. Sitti means grandmother in Arabic, and in this lyrical picture book an American child ~misses her grandmother who lives in a Palestinian village "on the other side of the earth." The child remembers when she visited Sitti. They didn't speak the same language: at first they talked through her father, who spoke both English and Arabic, and then they invented their own language with signs and hums and claps. She remembers the house and the countryside, the culture and the clothes, and the intimacy of brushing Sitti's hair. She also remembers the painful leave-taking ("Even my father kept blowing his nose and walking outside"), and back in the U.S., she writes a letter to the President: "If the people of the United States could meet Sitti, they'd like her, for sure." Carpenter's paintings show the physical bond between child and grandmother when they're close and their imaginary connection when they're far away from each other. Like the human embrace, the pictures flow with soft curving lines of clothes and hills, birds and sky, all part of the circle of the rolling earth. There are too few books like this one about Arabs and Arab Americans as people. Nye edited the powerful global poetry collection for older readers, This Same Sky (1992); that title applies here, too, showing that "people are far apart, but connected." Every child who longs for a distant grandparent will recognize the feeling. ~--Hazel Rochman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 3-A young American girl meets her Palestinian grandmother face to face, and the two forge a bond that sustains them from their opposite sides of the world. Wonderful collages-at once ethereal and solid, exotic and familiar-deftly serve the poetic text. (June, 1994) (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
On a trip halfway around the world, young Mona comes to love her grandmother as she learns about the daily life of the elderly Palestinian Arab woman. When she returns home, Mona writes a letter to the president, in which she describes her grandmother and asks for peace. The poetic, rich language is dotted with imagery that is often picked up in the illustrations. From HORN BOOK 1994, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Drowsing in bed or aloft in her swing at home in the US, Mona recalls visiting ``Sitti'' (Grandma) on ``the other side of the earth.'' Though Sitti speaks only Arabic (she and Mona ``talked through my father, as if he were a telephone''), the two had their own language of gestures and glances, hums, and claps. Sitti showed Mona around her neighborhood and shared with her the pleasure of traditional household tasks. Nye, a poet who edited This Same Sky (1992, ALA Notable), deftly assembles particulars signifying the warm and enduring bond growing between Sitti and her American granddaughter, recounting the incidents with quiet eloquence. In Carpenter's collages, vigorously painted figures and settings are enriched with photographed details, fabric patterns, and--in a striking opening spread--a global map as a delicate underlay. Mona's narrative concludes with an explicit, heartfelt plea for peace, addressed to the President of the US; but the universal humanity that's implicit in her lyrical portrait of Sitti is more powerful still. (Picture book. 4-9)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
